Finnish pharmaceutical company, Orion, has entered a partnership with nanoparticle formulation development company, Nanoform, aiming to improve the potential of new chemical entities and increase their likelihood of entering clinical development.
The partnership is based on Nanoform’s Controlled Expansion of Supercritical Solutions (CESS) formulation technology, able to produce nanoformed particles of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to specifications as small as 10nm.
CESS technology has the potential to enable poorly soluble molecules in the pharmaceutical pipeline to progress into clinical development by increasing their rate of dissolution and improving their bioavailability.
According to Nanoform, many new chemical entities struggle to progress into clinical development due to their physico-chemical properties, with the issue expected to exacerbate as molecular complexity increases in drug discovery.
However, ‘Nanoform-ed’ APIs have ‘shown promise’ for overcoming this challenge by increasing the powder dissolution and even intrinsic solubility of the compounds, the company stated, with the partnership expected to provide a path to clinical trials for poorly soluble molecules developed by Orion.
Juha Kiesvaara, VP of global pharmaceutical research at Orion, stated that utilizing nanoparticles could also result in a simplified formulation process.
According to Kiesvaara, Orion will benefit by Nanoform's technology enabling "[production] of tailored nanoparticles smaller than 200nm from solution, in a controlled and reproducible manner, with good yield and without the need for excipients," which is 'challenging' to do with currently available pharmaceutical manufacturing techniques.
